The Cultural College 



in a 

New Era 



Walter Edwin Peck, M. A. 



Address delivered on invitation of its Faculty at 

the 104th Commencement of Hamilton 

College, June 19, 1916 



The Cultural College in a New Era 

The American College is on public trial. 
The jury is composed of critical citizens 
who, for the main part, have never seen 
the inside of a college class room. Their 
standards are, perhaps, for us too de- 
cidedly utilitarian. Yet these folk are 
to adjudicate the case. So serious has 
the contest for the perpetuation of the 
American College become that Nicholas 
Murray Butler has just now admitted for 
the defense: "As I view the facts, the 
traditional American College is disap- 
pearing before our eyes and will, unless 
the disintegrating forces are checked, 
disappear entirely within another gene- 
ration or so." A most unfortunate ad- 
mission from an apologist for the Ameri- 
can College! A western college professor 
has said: "If the college has something 
to offer our social, intellectual, and moral 
life which neither the high school, the 
university, nor the technical school can 
offer; if it has a distinct and beneficent 
contribution to make to American civilza- 

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tion, the college should remain, and en- 
lightened public opinion will demand its 
jealous preservation. If, on the other 
hand, it but accomplishes what a year or 
two added to the high school together 
with the professional school can do equal- 
ly well, and even more cheaply, then by 
all means the college should go." Ap- 
palling, that any American educator 
should thus attack the college as it is! 
Yet clearly, if the case is to be carried for 
the defense, something must be done. 
For the prosecution has preferred many 
charges. 

The first of these is that most of our 
American colleges are today guilty of 
mere slavish imitation of the universities, 
the technical schools, and even — more's 
the pity! — the upper years of the high 
schools. The function of the true college 
seems to be confused with that of other 
types. The result is, as William P. Trent 
has aptly remarked, "We are requiring it 
to do all sorts of things for all sorts of 
people, and then wondering why it does 
not do an ideal sort of thing for a special 
sort of people." Between the various 
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types ruthless competition is the inevi- 
table consequence; competition for en- 
dowment, competition for students, com- 
petition for public approval for what? 
For doing the same work, in each case. 
The responsibility, of course, rests upon 
the shoulders of institutions of all the 
types; but just now the American College 
is being held for the reckoning. It must 
abandon these pretensions to the work 
that is properly within the province of 
the high schools, the technical schools, and 
the universities — or be ruled out of court. 
For it is, in the eyes of this somewhat 
cynical jury, the least necessary of the 
four types. 

The second charge concerns the devo- 
tion of the faculties of our colleges to 
outworn fetishes, discarded shibboleths of 
education whose efficacy in the social or- 
ganism of today cannot be adequately 
defended. There is little doubt that there 
is at present too great emphasis in the 
American College upon subjects, and too 
little attention to the motives, laws and 
mechanism of thought production. Only 
those subjects should remain in the cur- 



riculum which can be made, and will be 
made to develop the thinking of the 
student, and will give him that "land- 
scape" in his life for which our own 
honored President has so often and so 
eloquently pleaded — that vision of which 
our nation now stands in unquestioned 
need. But all such subjects of the older 
curricula which have proven themselves 
worthy should be retained or reinstated 
according to modern organization and 
methods. In the last fifty years the ten- 
dency has been to renounce too readily 
those subjects against which Ikonoklastes 
had raised a hue and cry, however justifi- 
able his plaint. 

Again, the prosecution holds that the 
college student of today in the halls of 
learning rarely recognizes his Mistress 
Knowledge, but hurries away at the tinkle 
of a gong to his true love on the athletic 
field. And the facts are at hand to sub- 
stantiate the charge. So fearful is the 
youth that he may become a ' grind" that 
he races through a certain set of assign- 
ments, flings himself into a dress suit, 
and is off to sing his way to fame, per- 
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haps, or bob to public applause in some 
trifling farce. For to neglect the outside 
activities for attainment in the class room 
would be, unquestionably, to set himself 
against the crowd. Social graces he 
magnifies beyond all reason, and in pur- 
suit of them spends most of the time of 
his college course. The bane of such mis- 
placed emphasis he realizes only when he 
has graduated. Now the value of these 
diversions, individually considered, is not 
questioned. The evil is in that they are 
become the principal concern — the sine 
qua non — of undergraduate life. 

As members of college faculties we are 
charged with responsibility for this con- 
dition in that we tolerate slipshod work 
in the class room. To this charge, so 
generally true, there is no answer, not 
even a plausible excuse. As institutions 
of higher education many of our colleges 
are a travesty upon the ancient honor of 
the name. What we will not accept if we 
select our students from the secondary 
schools — superficial attainment — we too 
often approve by accepting careless work 
done in the Freshman year in college. 
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The student soon discovers that it is not 
necessary to obtain more than a D, or a 
C — "gentleman's grades," so-called, and, 
following the line of least resistance 
pointed out by a lenient faculty, he gets 
no more than this D or C. The college 
faculty has allowed the reins to slip from 
its nerveless fingers, and the students 
have taken them up. No longer is the 
faculty leading; it is being led; and the 
low standard of performance of the 
proper tasks of the college, degraded by 
the too-numerous student activities and a 
weak faculty, becomes the reputed stand- 
ard of the college among those who are 
"beyond the pale." Unless the faculties, 
backed by firm governing bodies, resume 
control, there is little hope for the Ameri- 
can College. 

And when we do resume control, let us 
make of our colleges what they should al- 
ways have been — republics of learning. 
Faculty and student body should be vitally 
and constantly concerned in the actual 
search for Truth. The class room should 
be a never-failing source of inspiration, 
where there is instilled in the thinking of 



the pupil the spirit of curiosity to know, 
to become in fact a Seeker. No force will 
so certainly transform the college from 
what it is to a temple of wisdom than 
scholarly research and creative activity 
on the part of every member of the 
faculty. Given daily in the class room 
the concrete illustration behind the desk, 
of the scholar who knows whereof he 
speaks when urging original investiga- 
tion upon his class, the youth will not be 
so loth to follow in his steps. And these 
years of a student's life, no less than those 
usually given to university work, are, 
psychologically considered, years well 
spent in such tasks. It is not too early to 
infuse in the student's mind the inner 
meaning of culture. When the lesson is 
deferred beyond the habit-forming period, 
he does not attain the heights. No com- 
promise is possible. The college that 
would realize its ideal must rid itself of 
all incumbrances of inferiority and sloth- 
fulness and cleave the way for those 
who seek that which, according to its pro- 
fessions, at least, the college has to offer — 
EDUCATION. 

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In order to accomplish this, we must 
change our class room methods. Instead 
of insisting that the student impassively 
receive a certain predigested mass of 
ideas by dictation or other method, we 
must make it clear to him that unless he 
manifests a genuine grasp of the subject, 
and ability to cope with it in general dis- 
cussion, he will not receive the approval 
of the professor as having completed a 
given course. Original thinking and ex- 
pression, not a handsomely-penned note- 
book, should be the criterion. A com- 
mendable idea for testing a student's 
comprehension of a part of his education, 
at least, is that in vogue at Harvard, 
where a special final examination upon 
the whole of a student's investigations in 
the division of history, government, and 
economics is required. The plan is de- 
rived from the old world and was once 
operative in certain American colleges. 
Final examinations upon the subjects in 
the curriculum might be deferred until 
three-and-a-half years of the college 
course had been completed. This would 
be a revolt against smattering and cram- 

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ming. Only broad and thorough knowl- 
edge of a field could meet this crucial test. 
Of no less importance is the necessity 
for the moral guidance of students in this 
truly critical period of their lives. The 
American College may not abdicate its 
duty of bringing, or (as is usually the 
case) of keeping the student to a right at- 
titude toward his God. That thesis is 
false which holds that the student, while 
under the control of the college in all else, 
should not be subject to its direction in 
moral choices. The numerous and baffling 
forms of immorality in thought and con- 
duct that are the curse of many "liberal- 
minded" colleges are unanswerable argu- 
ments for obedience to His command who 
said "Feed my sheep." Of course, no 
faculty can make such an impress upon 
its students as should be made unless it is 
itself frankly and positively Christian. 
In these days of the travail of Europe, 
the capricious and whimsical materialism 
in our colleges is one of the greatest 
menaces to our republic. For in them 
are the leaders of tomorrow trained, and 
if the inestimable value of the Christian 
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religion in faith and practice is not im- 
pressed upon them now, of what kind 
shall be their conduct of the nation to- 
morrow? The hazard is too great! 

With a promise of good behavior, then, 
the American College is dismissed from 
the court. But it is dismissed on parole. 
Unless these evils are permanently rem- 
edied it will, in the new era, be crowded 
to the wall by institutions of the other 
types. 

Whither shall we go? The American 
College must assume its fitting place as 
a cultural institution. Emphasis must 
be upon the humanities and the social 
sciences. But unless it teaches a deeper 
appreciation of Life, which is but a con- 
tinual series of momentous choices, and 
prepares the student for living by intro- 
ducing him to the lore of human history 
and human achievements, that he may 
choose wisely and well; unless it trains 
him to think consecutively, and judicially, 
and to act with determination; unless it 
indicates the eternal verities and the One 
Great Verity, God; unless it inspires him 
with a throbbing desire to serve God and 
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Man through realizing the fullest possi- 
bilities of his own talents in relation to 
the good of Society ; unless, finally, it 
teaches him humility, and a sensitive re- 
gard for all that is beautiful in Nature 
and Man, it will not fulfill its mission. A 
tremendous task — aye! But in the per- 
formance of it in this "blood-red eclipse 
of Europe," as the light of the Old World 
wavers and grows dim, the American 
College shall inherit, at last, the Kingdom, 
the Power, and the Glory. 



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